Hello all: New Tableau user here (still in my trial period) attempting to learn the "lay of the land". I am very excited about the potential with Tableau and my head is spinning with ways that it can help my business. I've hit a roadblock which I'm hoping that someone can help me with. I've queried an ODBC database containing some accounting figures and have started to put together a profit and loss statement. Right now, I have all of my income accounts and expense accounts showing accurate totals by month for 2012. While I can show subtotals without issue, I am not sure how to show a basic net income number (total income- total expense). I also need to perform calculations on that net income number with some of the other data shown already aggregated the worksheet. For example, I would take net income total and then add Depreciation to it, and then show that total on a separate row. I'm looking for what basically amounts to a calculated item (not field) in Excel PivotTables. The screenshot attached better explains my goal.
Note (if it matters):The calculation being used to aggregate the data is
sum(iif([Account Type]="Income",[GLTxn Line Amount]*-1,[GLTxn Line Amount])). If I just used GLTxn Line Amount (every GL transaction that hit a particular account) as my measure all of the income accounts would be negative - technically correct from the database's perspective but does not look right for reports.
Please let me know my goal is possible with Tableau and if so what I need to do to get there. If this is a common question I apologize - I tried searching for similar topics but was unable to find anything. Thank you in advance.
Adam
Hi Adam,
The view in your screenshot is not currently possible using just one worksheet. However, the desired values can probably be computed and placed on a worksheet of their own. Then, the two worksheets can be placed on a dashboard together to get a view similar to the above screenshot.
-Tracy
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